Avalon Properties Inc., v. Peabody

In Avalon Properties Inc., v. Peabody, 6 LCR 327, 328 (1998), Peabody amended its zoning code and created a Planned Residential Development district ("PRD") to replace the prior zoning for a particular area of the city. The PRD required a special permit for all uses, except those exempt under G.L. c. 40A, 3 or merely incidental. After finding that the PRD violated SCIT, the court subsequently determined that there was no way to salvage even a portion of the PRD bylaw. Id. at 328. However, the court also did not choose to declare the land within the now-illegal PRD un-zoned, as the plaintiff had requested. Instead, the court ruled that the zoning regulations that the PRD had replaced -- and which governed the land before the defective PRD came into effect -- would apply because leaving land un-zoned was too radical a remedy. Id. The Court (Scheier, J.) stated, "were allowance of exempt uses enough to satisfy the uniformity requirement of G.L. c. 40A, 4, every zoning bylaw and ordinance in Massachusetts would be insulated from SCIT challenge on that basis." Additionally, then Justice Scheier determined that provisions in a zoning bylaw permitting, as of right, only accessory, incidental uses do not operate to immunize an otherwise SCIT-deficient bylaw scheme from being in violation of that doctrine. Id.